Bookkeeping Services in Calgary
Our team of bookkeepers in Calgary is made up of professionals with a cumulative 120+ years of experience. Why not let them take care of the bookkeeping, freeing you up to run your company, pursue new business opportunities, or improve your work/life balance.
In addition to completing the bookkeeping for your company, if requested, we can meet with you to review reports, providing you with accurate cashflow, revenue and expense updates throughout the fiscal year. You can be hands on or hands off to the degree that you wish.
We provide bookkeeping to clients in all types of industries, but have significant experience and expertise in:
Real Estate & Mortgage Brokerages (including RECA Trust Accounting)
Medical-related Professional Corporations (Medical Doctors, Dentistry, Chiropractic, etc.)
Construction & related trades
Consulting
Interior Design
Landscaping
Beauty & Hair Salons
Pet Services
Trucking (long haul & local)
Retail
And many more
We offer flexible bookkeeping plans including Monthly, Quarterly or Annual packages. We also give you the option of our staff completing this work at your office or ours – you tell us what’s best for you!
One of the most commonly asked questions we receive is ‘what can I do to save on accounting fees?’
There are several ways that a company can minimize the expenses incurred for accounting services. Most of these pertain directly to how information is submitted for bookkeeping to be completed. Most have heard of the ‘dreaded shoebox’ reference – a client shows up to drop off their shoebox of paper – their information & documents for the full year of their corporation, crammed into a shoebox for their bookkeeper to sort through, organize and make sense of.
While we are always able to do the work to sort & organize information, this isn’t the best use of your bookkeeper’s skills, time, or your company’s budget. Following are some simple steps that can be done to significantly minimize the time required to complete bookkeeping work:
Ensure that you are providing a monthly statement for each bank account & credit card account in the name of the corporation.
Often transaction records from online banking are acceptable as well, however some banks don’t include a running balance on these, meaning that your accountant can’t verify & confirm the balance at yearend – this is an essential step in the corporate yearend completion process.
Some vendors do not issue statements if you have a $0 balance and there was no activity on the account during the period the statement covers. If this is the case for one or more months & vendors, make a note of this and include it with the other statements for the appropriate vendor when you submit your information to your accountant.
As a rule, .csv or .xls or other spreadsheet files are not sufficient documentation for accounting purposes, as these files can be amended by anyone accessing the file at any time. If you need to download statements from your online banking, ensure they are a pdf of an actual statement.
Create an envelope/file folder for each month of the fiscal year of the corporation.
To each envelope or folder add all bank & credit card statements for that month, along with all invoices issued to clients and receipts for expenses purchased during that month.
If you are inclined to do more to reduced bookkeeping costs, the following steps can also be completed:
Review each expense receipt and attach it (paper clip, binder clip or use another envelope) to the appropriate bank or credit card statement for the account the expense was paid from.
Separate expense receipts into your company’s most commonly-used categories. Examples of these are:
Fuel & Vehicle expenses (parking, maintenance/repair, carwashes, etc.)
Office supplies (consumables such as paper, printer ink, etc.)
Meals & Advertising
Keep in mind that this is a highly scrutinized category by CRA.
Receipts for meals should include the name of the person(s) you were meeting with, and the purpose of the meeting
Receipts for meals for 1 person are much more difficult to justify, unless you are travelling away from where your company is based.
While there is no ‘allowable amount’ for this category, our Calgary bookkeepers can provide you with some guidelines.
Tools & Supplies
Subcontractor payments (construction trades)
Other ways to decrease the amount of time (and subsequent fees) for bookkeeping:
Pay business expenses from business accounts
Pay personal expenses from personal accounts
While this isn’t always possible, there are a couple of other strategies that can work to reduce fees.
If your company hasn’t qualified for a credit card account with a high enough credit limit, resulting in you using personal cards to make purchases, consider using 1 personal account dedicated to business transactions. This will reduce the amount of transactions required to correctly account for these expenses.
E-transfers are being used by businesses more and more because of their ease, and vendors are always happy to receive payment quickly. Following are a couple of ways to ensure that these transactions aren’t creating more work for your bookkeeper or accountant:
When an E-transfer is sent, print the confirmation page and make a note of who it was sent to and what is being paid (indicate invoice #, etc.)
When an E-transfer is received, print the confirmation page and make a note of who it was from and what was being paid (indicate invoice #, etc. If you are receiving partial payment, indicate this as well.)
Most banks are now making available an E-transfer summary for a specific period. These can be easily printed for a month or full year. These summaries can be included in the information submitted for yearend completion and often these answer many questions the bookkeeper/accountant might have regarding these transactions.
As an alternative, a basic spreadsheet could be kept recording date, etransfer sent/received, the recipient or sender, the amount of the transfer & a note indicating what is being paid.
If you work in the construction industry and use subcontractors:
Ensure you are receiving invoices from subcontractors before they are paid for the work.
While this doesn’t have to be a computer-generated invoice, it should contain the subcontractor’s information:
If incorporated, include company name, address, GST #
If not incorporated, include full legal name, address & Social Insurance Number or GST # if they have a GST account set up.
Ideally, a subcontractor should also sign to acknowledge that payment has been received on the invoice as well.
Invoices from subcontractors enable your bookkeeper/accountant to correctly allocate these expenses and prevent these expenses from being considered as shareholder’s income.
Proper invoices containing complete information will also satisfy a review by CRA, should one be conducted following completion of a tax return filing.